in empty lands
by ncfan
Summary: -Shunsui x Nanao- She dreams of him. But Nanao knows that dreams speak only of her body, and nothing of her mind.


**Characters**: Nanao, Shunsui**  
Summary**: She dreams of him. But Nanao knows that dreams speak only of her body, and nothing of her mind.**  
Pairings**: Shunsui x Nanao**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: spoilers for Turn Back the Pendulum arc**  
Timeline**: post-Turn Back the Pendulum arc**  
Author's Note**: I'm taking a slightly different approach to Shunsui x Nanao here than I usually do. Kinda creepy, actually, when I look at it. I'm not so sure about this; some advice would be nice.**  
Disclaimer:** I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_This is the feeling you know so well._

_This is the feeling of your fingers clenching a pen or skating across the metal keys of a typewriter if you grow tired of ink pots and pens._

_This is the feeling of late nights and even earlier mornings, and no rest caught between._

_This is the feeling of admitting nothing and denying everything._

_This is the feeling of your flesh dying, little by little, secure in the knowledge that your mind alone still rules._

For tonight, cowled deep in the inky darkness except for the dull gold star of a lamp, it is the scratching of a pen that sings its song of empty lands to Ise Nanao. The refrain (_battles fought and lost as all comes to naught_) is, of course, so familiar to her by now that she could sing it in her sleep. She sings fairly well, Nanao likes to think; her voice no longer cracks on especially high notes like it used to.

When the pen starts to sing its song, it asks Nanao if she still dreams.

She does, sometimes, on the edge of sleeping consciousness and deep and dark abysses. The subject of her dreams is one she faces every day in the stark sunlight of the waking world, so Nanao has long since learned to submerge whatever desires she possesses. She's good at that.

For all Shunsui's protestations, he really doesn't have a clue.

But Nanao does dream of him.

She is slightly shamed to admit it. The content of her dreams—_hand roving across her flesh and lips hot on her skin, breathing hard, skin damp with sweat—_is such that Nanao isn't comfortable speaking of it. Rangiku, Unohana, Soi Fong, any of those women would tell her the same thing. This, Nanao knows, is the slumbering diversion of adolescent girls, not grown women and certainly not someone like her. Certainly not Ise Nanao, whom all the world but her knows doesn't dream of anything but work to be done that isn't getting done any faster in-between. Her dreams are dead as dust, as barren and sterile as a scorched, empty land after a great cataclysm of battle.

She doesn't dream of him, except when she does.

Nanao has always been lonely. She has always been alone, from the days of her earliest childhood in the care of her austere grandmother to her early days as a Shinigami under the tutelage of Yadomaru Lisa to where she is now, respected if not liked by the majority of her division. To be alone all Nanao has to do is breathe; it doesn't matter where she is or whose company she finds herself in. It had always been that way, and Nanao does not devote too much thought as to whether she likes it or not. Ise Nanao stands alone.

This doesn't change anything. Just another thought to be filed away and forgotten—except it won't be forgotten; it refuses to be forgotten. It stays in her mind, sometimes in the forefront and sometimes not, but always there, ready to make her skin prickle as her captain approaches. Nanao rubs her arms, frowns, and begins to contemplate ways to block out dreams. There are pills in her medicine cabinet that should do the trick.

Shunsui still doesn't have a clue. Thankfully.

Yes, she's lonely. As much as Nanao insists on a solitary lifestyle, there are times when she, invariably on the outside, looks in a window and sees what can be if she just knocks on someone's door. There's always a desire, Nanao knows, within all creation to have what they do not own. Sometimes, she does want the company of someone who might understand. Maybe that, to some extent, is what draws her to Shunsui, a big, loud man whose booming laugh can banish any yawning silence. Someone who promises to cure loneliness. Nanao knows Shunsui, for all his promises, can't touch what she feels, can't begin to fathom what makes her cold. Shunsui's never been able to keep his promises.

When he reaches out to touch her cheek Nanao swats his hand away sharply even though blood jumps in her veins at the contact of skin to skin. Her body aches for another touch because it receives such from no one else, but her mind abhors the thought of it.

It's a _dream_, Nanao tells herself harshly. That, and nothing more. Dreams tell her things of her body. They tell her what her _body_ desires. They speak nothing of her mind, and nothing of priorities and necessities and what is and isn't capable of breaking her entirely.

Lisa had him first. She was just a child when she observed the behavior Lisa and Shunsui displayed around each other, but Nanao knew what she was seeing—she hadn't been raised in ignorance, but she _had_ been raised in uncomfortably close quarters with other families. Lisa still has him, because she's dead. A lover who lives can become unpleasant, can become estranged, but one who is dead will always remain the way she was in memory and in heart. Nanao looks at Shunsui and knows he's not free, and when he looks at her she knows that he doesn't really see her—her resemblance to the late lieutenant of the Eight Division is more than a little eerie. In her mind, Nanao doesn't want someone who sees ghosts hanging around her and plants the features of another woman over her face.

What she sees in these dreams, more than anything else, is a surrender of control. That can never be done. Nanao _must_ be able to predict her own actions, her own life. Her mind must rule, so her body can not and can not bring her to disaster, to heartbreak, to a dissociation from reality. When Nanao sees the sun, she sees the sun; when she looks upon the moon, she sees only the moon. She sees things for what they are, does not lie to herself, and prefers to keep it that way.

Every morning, Nanao kills the desires of her flesh, and every night they rise from the dead. It is close now.

"You're still awake?"

Nanao can smell the wafts of plum wine and sake and myriad perfumes long before she ever sees him. Shunsui is hanging his head inside the door of her office, smiling slightly but with his brow furrowed—he worries about her sleeping habits, Shunsui says often. Nanao merely shakes her head and tells him that she can go without too much sleep; she doesn't tell him that she chases sleep away and prays that it will never return.

A stiff nod answers his question. "Yes. There's still work to be done, things that can't wait until tomorrow." Nanao refuses to look at him.

Even though she doesn't look at him, Nanao still hears that laugh, loud and clear. "Do you plan on working until the flesh slides off your fingers, Nanao-chan?"

At this, she looks up.

Nanao almost smiles. She almost laughs derisively, and tells him _exactly_ how long she intends on working and burying her mind and her body in work.

Instead, her blue-violet eyes are cool and as unreadable as glass. "I plan on working until the work is done, Kyouraku-taicho." If her voice is a bit distant, it's because inside she's anything but and she needs to be alone _so badly_.

"Well don't stay up too late. Good night."

"Good night, taicho."

The smell of plum wine makes Nanao's throat burn just a little bit. The scratching of a pen leaves her hands to aching. The wafting of perfume makes her head spin, and she recalls dreams that distract her at all hours, nearly making her betray herself. No one could tell this, by looking at her. All they see is Ise Nanao, cold as ice and almost without human feeling, filling out reports. Stiff and stern, as always, passionless, something vital in her shriveled.

The surface does not reflect the depths. The depths are in turmoil. The depths have memories of things that never happened and are making Nanao's heart begin to race every time Shunsui steps into the room.

She listens to her mind, and not her body. Her heart doesn't enter into it; Nanao's mind and her heart ceased being on civil speaking terms a long time ago. She's afraid of what it might tell her now, so she doesn't try to listen.

As ever, mistress of herself, until her flesh dies.


End file.
